Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Selbsttranszendenz (self-transcendence; Selbst-Transzenden): drei Stufen (intellektuelle, moralische, religiöse)

Kurzinhalt: ... the fact remains that the intellectual, the moral, and the religious are three successive stages in a single achievement, the achievement of self-transcendence;

Textausschnitt: 127b If I have said something to clarify the ambiguities of the term "object," and the process, verification, let me now draw attention to the continuity of the intellectual with the moral and the religious, of the mind with the heart. (Fs)

127c Our conscious and intentional operations occur on four interlocked levels. There is a level of experiencing, a level of understanding and conception, a level of reflection and judgment, a level of deliberation and decision. We are moved, promoted from one level to the next by questions; from experiencing to understanding by questions for intelligence; from understanding to judging by questions for reflection; from judging to deciding by questions for deliberation. So the many operations are linked together both on the side of the subject and on the side of the object. On the side of the subject there is the one mind putting the many questions in pursuit of a single goal. On the side of the object there is the gradual cumulation and conjoining of partial elements into a single whole. So insight grasps the intelligibility of what sense perceives. Conception unites what separately sense perceives and intelligence grasps. Judgment pronounces on the truth of the conceiving and on the reality of the conceived. Decision acknowledges the value of actuating potentialities grasped by intelligence and judged to be real. So the transcendentals, the intelligible, the true, the real, the good, apply to absolutely every object for the very good reason that they are grounded in the successive stages in our dealing with objects. But they are one in their root as well as in their application. For the intending subject intends, first of all, the good but to achieve it must know the real; to know the real he must know what is true; to know what is true he must grasp what is intelligible; and to grasp what is intelligible he must attend to the data of sense and to the data of consciousness. (Fs)

128a Now this unity of the human spirit, this continuity in its operations, this cumulative character in their results, seem very little understood by those that endeavor to separate and compartmentalize and isolate the intellectual, the moral, and the religious. They may, of course, be excused inasmuch as the good work they happen to have read is mostly critical while the constructive work they happen to have come across is mostly sloppy. But the fact remains that the intellectual, the moral, and the religious are three successive stages in a single achievement, the achievement of self-transcendence; and so attempts to separate and isolate the intellectual, the moral, and the religious are just so many efforts to distort or to entirely block authentic human development. (Fs)

128b What is the intellectual but an intentional self-transcendence? It is coming to know, not what appears, not what is imagined, not what is thought, not what seems to me to be so, but what is so. To know what is so is to get beyond the subject, to transcend the subject, to reach what would be even if this particular subject happened not to exist. (Fs)

128c Still the self-transcendence of knowledge is merely intentional. With the moral a further step is taken, for by the moral we come to know and to do what is truly good. That is a real self-transcendence, a moving beyond all merely personal satisfactions and interests and tastes and preferences and becoming a principle of benevolence and beneficence, becoming capable of genuine loving. (Fs) (notabene)

129a What, finally, is religion but complete self-transcendence? It is the love of God poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that is given to us (Rom. 5:5). It is the love in Christ Jesus St. Paul described when he wrote: "For I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depths-nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:38f.). That love is not this or that act of loving but a radical being-in-love, a first principle of all one's thoughts and words and deeds and omissions, a principle that keeps us out of sin, that moves us to prayer and to penance, that can become the ever so quiet yet passionate center of all our living. It is, whatever its degree, a being-in-love that is without conditions or qualifications or reserves, and so it is other-worldly, a being-in-love that occurs within this world but heads beyond it, for no finite object or person can be the object of unqualified, unconditional loving. Such unconditional being-in-love actuates to the full the dynamic potentiality of the human spirit with its unrestricted reach and, as a full actuation, it is fulfilment, deep-set peace, the peace the world cannot give, abiding joy, the joy that remains despite humiliation and failure and privation and pain. (Fs) (notabene)

129a This complete being-in-love, the gift of God's grace, is the reason of the heart that reason does not know. It is a religious experience by which we enter into a subject-to-subject relation with God. It is the eye of faith that discerns God's hand in nature and his message in revelation. It is the efficacious reality that brings men to God despite their lack of learning or their learned errors. It is in this life the crown of human development, grace perfecting nature, the entry of God into the life of man so that man comes to love his neighbor as himself.1 (Fs)